


Standard Lines

by arbitraryink



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: BWB (Buri? What Buri?), F/M, PPF 2010, Peculiar Pairing: Raoul/Sabine, Peculiar Pairings Ficathon, Tortall/Provost's Dog crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-03
Updated: 2010-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitraryink/pseuds/arbitraryink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raoul meets a woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standard Lines

**Author's Note:**

> This began with some backhanded comment about time-travel and turned into my accidental OTP in the Tammy!verse. Written for Peculiar Pairings Ficathon 2010 [Goldenlake](http://fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com).

Some time ago she’d had Zia send up a pitcher of mead and a platter of tasters to tide her over until supper – by now the squares of fresh apple pie are cold, the skilful arrangements of meat rounds and cheese pieces more rubbery than crisp, but nonetheless she acts the part of the good hostess, another remnant of her noble heritage that she has never tried to lose. Lifting one of two goblets, she fills it and offers it first to the other knight, perched on the edge of her sitting-room chair with a grace she never would have expected from a man of his bulk. 

She isn’t expecting anything from him – they have, after all, come from very different places – but she meets his black eyes and takes a step closer.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is odd, this knight from Goldenlake, as odd as the rest of his gear, his expression, his way of seeing right through her with a single glance. “I don’t drink.” There are lines on his face around his eyes – laugh lines, she knows, not just the crow’s feet that emerge after long years of squinting into sunlight – and winging back from his temples there are streaks of grey in his dark, curly hair. 

She isn’t exactly sure how it begins, but suddenly Raoul’s hands are on her face and she can hardly catch enough breath to whisper please, please. Kissing him is not what she had expected. She has kissed many men in her day, but this man does it a little differently. He tilts his head so that she doesn’t have to move hers, allowing her to forego a concession she’s long since made, readjusting to the feeling of being handled, not handling. The nicest thing is that she’s about his size, her shoulders less broad but subtly, strongly muscled, her brown eyes almost perfectly level, the grooves of her body a perfect match to his.

“So,” she says against his mouth, the moment he pulls back a little, tangling his fingers in the long hair on her shoulders, “how long are you staying?”

¬-

He opens his eyes to find Numair sitting in a chair by the bed, long body slouched forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The tall man stirs as Raoul struggles to sit up, groaning at the sudden light-headedness that accompanies his movement. 

“How long has it been?” he forces out through chapped lips and a mouth as dry as the desert. There is an ache low in his back that he has never felt before; a sharp pulsing near his left eye brings back a memory of a blade glinting near the edge of his vision, a cudgel smashing toward his shield arm, and a look of terror on a blond Scanran boy. 

“Nine days,” answers Numair, an almost tangible exhaustion seeping from every pore in his body. “You cried out many times, and you spoke.” He watches as Raoul tries to force his legs off the bed and onto the floor, watches as they remain motionless on the pallet. “We were able to stop the bleeding in your head,” he tells the other man, “but you will not regain motion.”

This is his biggest terror, immobility. He has spent a lifetime since the Chamber of the Ordeal on the roads of Tortall as a roaming knight, but he doesn’t think he’s ready for retirement or life confinement to a bed. For what feels like the first time since his terror in the Chamber, he is prepared to take this news with a grain of salt. It hurts, the prospect of uselessness, but for the first time in a long time, he thinks of something else. He thinks of a lady knight with dark hair to match her eyes, tall and slender and beautiful. He bears this as his hope. Somehow he knows that Sabine of Macayhill is not just a fever dream.


End file.
